Lizard Radio

by Pat Schmatz

  For the lizards

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Acknowledgments

  I DO NOT BELIEVE. Not in any corner of my heart or scrap of my soul do I think that Sheila will carry it through. Not when she makes me pack a duffel. Not when she hustles me into the gov skizzer, not when we pedal through the grit-gray morning, and not when she takes me for the first time beyond city limits, into the afternoon countryside. Still, I will not believe.

  Not until we turn onto a gravel drive and pass under the wooden CROPCAMP sign do the first fear-flavored tendrils of belief creep in between my ribs. Sheila steers across the wide lot, takes her feet off the pedals, and parks. She steps out, reaches in the back for my duffel, and drops it on the gravel. It lands with a puff of dust. A woman strides across the lot to greet us. I get out of the skizzer.

  “Hello.” She is tall with light brown skin. “I’m Ms. Mischetti, the CropCamp director.”

  “Hello, Ms. Mischetti.” Sheila pronounces each syllable carefully. “This is Kivali Kerwin.”

  “Hello, Kivali.” The director moves closer to me, and I hitch a step back, against the skizzer. “Welcome.”

  I cut a look at Sheila. She won’t meet my eyes. The director watches me. Nobody’s eyes connect.

  “I’ll be going now,” says Sheila.

  Her voice is as tight as her face. For the past two weeks, she’s been all about the opportunity: an opening at a CropCamp close to home, how I’ll like living outdoors, how SayFree Gov is pressuring for early camp entrance for me, how it might be better than either of us can imagine. Now I see that she doesn’t believe it any more than I believed she’d bring me here.

  The director still looks only at me. Our triangle-gazed standoff lasts another beat, and then another, and then Sheila breaks it by stepping in the middle, turning her back on the director. She takes me by the shoulders and pulls me in — not quite a hug, but close — and whispers in my ear.

  “Be brave, my sweet gecko.”

  Then she leaves me.

  I don’t watch her go. The CropCamp director stands on the head of my shadow on the gravel. I refuse to look up and see her seeing me. I concentrate on standing still, not letting my inner shiver show.

  “Lacey!” Her feet shift, releasing my shadow-head as she turns to someone across the lot. “This is Kivali Kerwin — Pie Five, Slice Nineteen. Show her down, would you? She’ll just have time to drop off her things before orientation.”

  Ms. Mischetti walks away. I lift my head and look over my shoulder to see if Sheila is skizzing back under the CropCamp sign to get me: joke over, let’s go home.

  She’s not.

  I look up at the sky, searching for the saurians. Are they just on the other side of that puffy cloud, watching me? Can they see through clouds? Do they breathe human air? I’ve never been good at the science part.

  “Hey, you! Come on, get moving.”

  A girl in light green coveralls stands at the edge of the parking lot with her hands on her hips. I sling my bag over my shoulder. She starts walking, and I trudge along behind her. Her streak-blond ponytail bounces as we pass the L-shaped wooden office building and cross a large five-sided green lawn.

  “This is the Quint,” she says. “We have social time here every evening.”

  The straps of the duffel dig into my shoulder. Why did Sheila do it? Pressure or no, she didn’t have to. She could have put them off for at least two years. I just turned fifteen last week.

  “Over there is the Pavilion; that’s where orientation is.” Lacey points to a round-roofed structure with some people clustered outside. “The gong will ring in about ten ticks, and you need to be there. We have Cleezies there, too, every day and twice on Sundays. Over there, that’s the Mealio. We eat there.”

  I can’t imagine eating there. Not for one meal. Certainly not for three months of meals. As we cross the Quint, another long, L-shaped building with a low roof comes into view, and Lacey points.

  “That’s the Study Center. That’s where you’ll have class. The ayvee pod is there, too.”

  She leads me on a dirt path between spreading fields. Girls in pairs and threes and a few solos meet us along the path. I play the you-can’t-see-me-if-I-don’t-look-at-you game.

  “Greenhouse over there. Boys’ Pieville on the east side. Toolshed just past the greenhouse. Our Pieville’s down here.”

  At the edge of the field the path drops off, down a steep slope into a deep shade with a sharp, tangy smell. It’s a real forest. Trees, tall ones with green pine needles. The westering sun reaches through the gaps and spaces to create long streams of golden light through the shadows. The smell comes in not just through my nose — it seeps into my pores, gentling my shivery stomach.

  “The pies are in numerical order.” She points at a round, fabric-covered structure that comes to a point at the top. Others are smattered irregularly through the woods. “The privo and spigot are over there. Shower house is behind. No showers tonight; you’ll get your first chit from your crew guide tomorrow, and after that you have to earn them in the power room. That’s your pie, the far one back there. Slice numbers are stamped beneath the doors. You’re nineteen. Drop your duffel, and then get yourself back to the Pavilion for orientation. Everything happens strictly on time here.”

  She turns away and leaves me.

  I follow the path back to the last pie. Light gray synthie fabric stretches over wooden rods that converge at the top. Four doors. I locate the number nineteen stamped beneath the back door, the one facing a tangly copse of leaves and grasses and branches and brush. Kaleidoscope green.

  There’s a zipper tag at the bottom corner. I zip the door open and step into my slice of the pie. Cot along one wall, desk on the other. Three sets of beige coveralls stacked on the shelf unit in between. I drop my duffel and pull the komodo dragon out of my pocket. Tiny and fierce in constant frozen motion, it steps forward with its right front clawed foot. I set it on my palm and bring it up to my face.

  “Lizard time.” I speak aloud in the silence.

  Something rustles in the far side of the pie. We are not alone. I curl my fingers over the toy dragon and hide it away in my pocket, still holding tight.

  “Lizard time?”

  I close my eyes. Yes. Time for the saurians to get me out of here. Right now. Hurry up. A door unzips, and footsteps round the pie. I clutch the komodo. Its sharp metal edges dig into my palm. A gong rings in the distance.

  “That gong is for us. You coming?”

  I release the komodo, wipe m
y sweaty palms on my pants, zip my door open, and step out. My new comrade has a rampage of dark curls around her face, backlit by the angled sun. She looks me up, down, and up again.

  “Lizard time?”

  “Just kidding,” I say, and she breaks open a big grin.

  “Kidding, huh? Not everyone pulls a lizard out of their kidding bag. I’m Sully. I think you should be my new best friend. We can terrorize the camp.”

  Her eyes are warm, and her smile and stance confident. Social power rolls off her, the kind that everyone wants to get close to. The kind that is dangerous when it turns on you. She walks, and I follow a half step behind. We pass the other pies and scrabble up the steep path. Roots crisscross the dark earth beneath our feet. That dank tangy smell fills my whole head.

  We pop up next to the fields. There’s no longer a crowd near the Pavilion. They’re all inside. We sprint past the fields and scramble up to the door at the same time as a couple of breathless latecomers from the boys’ side. They open the door, letting us in first. Rocks rattle underfoot as we slink into the back row. We sit on a rough-hewn bench, breathing hard.

  Low wooden walls form the round structure. From waist-level up, it’s all screen until the high wooden-domed ceiling. Sparks and smoke dance from a fire up through the hole in the center of the roof.

  Ms. Mischetti stands. The murmurs and fidgets hush immediately.

  “Welcome to CropCamp,” she says. “Welcome to the beginning of the end of childhood. Welcome to community, to comradeship, to finding your place in the world. Welcome to work and learning, to responsibility, to growth and connection.”

  Her voice is a smooth-humming motor.

  “This is a safe place, putting you on the road to safety in life. I’ve never had a vape from this camp. Expuls are rare. There are thirty-nine of you here today, and I expect thirty-nine of you to receive your camp certifications at the end of August. With a cert from this camp, your chances of ever landing in Blight are less than three percent. You’ll enter the adult world ready for further education or a fulfilling career in agriculture.

  “The regs are strict here. I suggest that you comply and let us make this a good experience for you. If you leave here certless, you’ll face consequences that your MaDa cannot fix. If you are of age, you’ll go directly to Blight. If not, you will be relocated to fosters who can prepare you for a RepeaterCamp. So consider your actions carefully. Your choices here will follow you for the rest of your life.”

  She then launches a flow of suggestions and advice, weaving a steely web of restrictive assurance with promises to care for us and help us and teach us. She waves her hand, and Lacey and the other guides in their pale green coveralls stand. Then the teachers, and the counselors.

  More words, words like citizenry and safety, responsibility and open air and honest labor. Same words I saw in the infodocs that Sheila made me read last week.

  “I’m not seventeen,” I said. “You always said no camp before I’m seventeen, not over your dead body. Are you planning to die?”

  Sheila looked like I’d slapped her, and I was a little bit sorry. Only a little, because I still didn’t believe. But now I wonder: what if she really is planning to die? Maybe she has a horrible disease and is on her way to a med center right now. Or maybe she regrets picking me up off the sidewalk fifteen years ago, and this is her chance to finally be free of me.

  Ms. Mischetti is still talking, but her words fuzz and morph and slide on by without meaning. My comrades are all nearly grown, like Sully. Some lean forward, listening hard. Some gaze into middle space in front of them. One pair of eyes looks up across the fire, grabs mine, and holds.

  He’s a midrange bender. He has pale skin with a shadow of shave on his cheeks and chin. Straight dark hair sweeps across one eye. His features are chiseled and delicate, his nose long and sharp. He sits with one leg draped over the other. He smiles and dips his head ever so slightly, a nod of recognition.

  I check my own posture. I uncross my ankle from my knee and bring my legs closer together. He sees me do it and tilts up one corner of his mouth. He leans forward, face propped on his hand. Not on a fist beneath his chin, but with his fingers spread open on his cheek, and I realize that my own hands are clenched into fists. My every natural movement reveals bender, just like his. At least I try to keep mine under control. Especially here, among strangers.

  Sully elbows me and nods down at her right hand. It’s stretched out, palm up. Everyone else is lifting their hands to the same palm-up position. Two of the guides, Lacey and a tall guy with a scruff of blond whiskers, walk the circle in opposite directions from Ms. Mischetti. They carry baskets and lay something on each upturned palm.

  “Wait until everyone has one,” Ms. Mischetti says. “We do this together — it is your official entrance to summer CropCamp.”

  The guide sets something on my palm. It’s the size of a grape, light brown with an irregular surface.

  “Close your eyes,” Ms. Mischetti orders.

  Everyone does it, all the way around the circle. Everyone but me and the bender guy.

  “Close your eyes.”

  She looks directly at me. I cast my eyes down, still open.

  “On the count of three.” She lets me slide. “Put it in your mouth. Together, we’ll savor the sweet taste of community. One. Two.”

  My stomach is hollow, empty, caving in on itself. I didn’t eat anything when Sheila and I stopped just an hour outside of CropCamp. Too busy not-believing and refusing to participate.

  “Three.”

  I glance at the bender. He drops the thing to the rocks and puts his foot over it.

  “Now,” the director says. “All join hands.”

  The director’s eyes have me pinned, and hands reach for me on either side. I put the thing in my mouth. Saliva springs so fast and hard that I almost drool.

  Sully’s hand finds mine, interlacing fingers. Hmming passes around the circle, from taste to taste and palm to palm, and the sweet crunchy texture and softness inside spreads all through me. Sully moans, and the vibration tingles up my arm and the back of my neck, across my scalp.

  “Open your eyes now.”

  Ms. Mischetti speaks softly, no longer looking at me. I run my tongue around my mouth to be sure I haven’t missed anything. This sensation, it’s good, way beyond the taste. It sparks a big happy inside, bigger than the fear or dread or worry about Sheila.

  “Again I say: Welcome to CropCamp. Welcome to the world of discipline, diligence, cooperation, and camaraderie. Welcome to the gateway to your adult life.”

  She lights a long match, and I realize the sun has set. The guides step forward to light candles off the match. They enclose the candles in glass wind-covers.

  “The guides will escort you back to your Pievilles. Do not turn on any leddies until you’re in your own slice, and then only for what you absolutely need. Do not speak when you leave here. Just feel. Listen to the trees, to the wind and stars. Settle into your new home in silence. The gong will ring at six tomorrow. You will put on the camp coveralls and prepare for the day. We meet at CounCircle — that’s on the east side of the Mealio — promptly at the seven o’clock gong. Breakfast will follow.”

  She ends with the customary farewell, the one used in public gatherings throughout the country.

  “Come from One.”

  “Live in the light,” we reply.

  “Return to One.”

  We all say the last line together. I rise with the others, a unified mass in motion. Sully unlaces her hand from mine, running a fingertip across my palm as she lets go. She smiles as if she sees the tiny shiver dance up and down my spine. Her pupils are dark enough to fall into. She puts hands to my shoulders and turns me to follow the flickering lights at the doorway.

  We split as we exit, boys to the east and girls to the west. No one speaks, but the air is full of the sound and taste and sensation of the moment. The guides lead us down into the woods. Other comrades drop off as we pass their pies
. At the privo, Lacey lights a candle in the torch-holder. Only Sully and I and one other girl follow Lacey to the last pie. The other girl is tall, with hair gathered in a poof at the back of her head.

  Lacey points the candle toward our pie, and then continues along the path beyond. The three of us watch her candle dip and flicker. It angles to the left, flicks between trees, and finally disappears.

  “You must be number eighteen.” Sully turns to the third girl. A fullish moon is on the rise, just beginning to stream through the pines. “Or are you twenty? I’m Sully.”

  The tall girl turns her back and zips into slice eighteen between mine and Sully’s without a word.

  “Oh, right,” says Sully. “No speaking.”

  She lightly punches me in the arm and enters her slice. I round the pie and stand in front of my own door. I tuck my hands up under my armpits and face the darkness of the woods. The odd happy feeling continues to spin in my chest. It’s all so strange. The strangest part of all is that in this moment, I almost like it here.

  BRIGHT MOONLIGHT PRIES MY eyes open. My toy komodo glows in the beam, and I jolt up. The komodo hovers on the very edge of the shelf as if it’s about to leap onto my head. That’s not where I left it. Is it?

  I check my door. Yes, closed. No one has been in here — I would’ve heard the zipper. Slowly, I reach out to the dragon, half afraid it’ll leap at my finger and chomp it. But no, it doesn’t move as I touch the sharp tip of its cool metal nose. I turn it around so it faces the door the way I thought I’d left it. On guard.

  The night lies still around us. A slightly wheezy breath rises and falls, the sound leaking through the synthie wall that I share with number eighteen. Everything else is quiet except for the blood thudding in my ears. I sink back onto the pillow and put a hand on my jumpy heart.

  Deep breath in, two, three. I follow the air in and out. Shift my attention away from the here and now, shut it out the way I shut out the walk-a-day noise of machinery and humanity at home. I sink into the chitter and murmur, the moving shapes on the backs of my eyelids, the removal from the world and the day, and I tune in. Lizard Radio is the best place I know, the quietest and calmest, the furthest from anything bad or scary or —